Money quote, explaining why the Israeli center still stands behind Arik Sharon:
"The irony for centrist Israelis like myself is that, in principle, we're ready to make almost any concession, including in Jerusalem, for peace. In practice, though, we're convinced that no concession will bring us peace, because the issue isn't discovering the precise point on the map that will satisfy Arab claims but the Arab rejection of any place on the map for a Jewish state."
I’d be inclined to call this the money quote, since it explains the quote above:
In numerous conversations over the years that I've had with Palestinians, from all levels of society, the consensus that's emerged, with rare exceptions, is that Israel isn't the expression of a people returning home but of a colonialist intrusion in the Middle East.
What Halevi does not, and probably cannot, recognize, is that in point of fact Israel is NOT “the expression of a people coming home”. The European Jews that migrated to Palestine were not going home. They were going to a place they had never seen, a place that their fathers and grandfathers had never seen. They were migrating to somebody else’s home, a place that they intended to make their home regardless of any objections posed by the existing residents.
There is no imaginable “historical claim” for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. The notion of attempting to reconstitute a 2000 year old political entity at the expense of an existing population would be considered laughable and would never have been countenanced for a moment if not for the traditional ties between Judaism and British Christianity. Certainly their faith would have given the Eurpean Jews a sentimental connection to Palestine, but a claim to territory cannot be based on a sentimental connection.
Israel’s claim to the territory it occupies rests entirely on its military strength and that of its patrons. Jewish migration was enabled by British cooperation, and would never have happened if not for the British colonial presence. Israel’s continued military and economic superiority are underwritten by vast quantities of public and private external assistance. The Israeli claim to their territory is based on power: “we took it, we fought you and we won, so now it’s ours”. Moshe Dayan understood this better than anyone, and said it very explicitly (this really is a “money quote”):
Let us not today fling accusations at the murderers. Who are we that we should argue against their hatred? For eight years now they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their very eyes, we turn into our homestead the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers have lived… Let us not avert our gaze, so that our hand shall not slip. This is the fate of our generation, the choice of our life…
Of course that choice was also imposed on their descendants, and continues to this day, and of course those who do not understand that choice will not comprehend the implacable hatred it has engendered. From any reasonable historical perspective it is simply more accurate to call Israel a colonialist intrusion, or at least the product of a colonialist intrusion, than of some mythic “expression of a people coming home”. Until the Israelis and their supporters recognize this, as Dayan did, they will not understand the fight they are fighting. They took the place with armed force, and they want to keep it. The people they took it from want to take it back, the same way. One desire is no more or less legitimate than the other. That of course means perpetual conflict, which Dayan called “the choice of our life”.
The first step toward reversing that choice would be to acknowledge it and to take responsibility for its consequences, but that is not likely to happen. So we will continue to see the two sides killing each other, each wondering why the other will not simply go away and leave them alone. |
